Episode Archives

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escape

Have you ever dreamed of escaping?  Your job, your spouse, your country?   This hour, stories of rescue and escape.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What would you do if being a woman just didn't feel right? What if being a man didn't feel right either?

In the West, a few people are choosing to leave gender behind all together. Call them gender queer, third gender or gender guerillas… people are challenging all of our notions of “he...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The Meaning of Life

Part Three

 

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we consider the good stuff. Love. Poetry. Pleasure. Chocolate. Art. Beauty. New York Times Art Critic Michael Kimmelman says the beauty of beauty is that...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

As soon as you, or someone you love, has that first "senior moment" – you start to worry. Is this the beginning of the slippery slope of Alzheimer's Disease? Relax! There's something you can do. The good news is that most of us won't live long enough to get Alzheimer's. And the rest of us...Read more

book

We love books. We line them on shelves like totems. We pile them next to our beds in some hope they'll affect our dreams.  For many of us, books are sacred objects. And sometimes, just sometimes, they’re even magical.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Shuttered businesses line the familiar streets of producer Charles Monroe-Kane’s hometown in the Rust Belt in northeastern Ohio. The steel mill where his father worked is shut down, locked behind chains. Opioid abuse is...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

America was once a nation of readers, but now experts warn that reading is in decline as our cultural life moves online. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an hour in praise and defense of the book. Ursula Le Guin takes book publishers to task and a beloved children's book editor...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ten years after the end of apartheid, what’s left to document the struggle?  For the filmmakers of the documentary “Amandla,” there’s music.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the songs that faced down death, despair and terror on the road to equality in South Africa.  Also, the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Listen to the experts and they’ll tell you the suburbs are boring, stifling places to live, full of bad architecture.  Well, more than half of all Americans now live in suburbia.  Can so many people be wrong?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a defense of suburbs.  Also, playwright...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

All the world's a stage! The Play's the thing. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hardly a day goes by when the words that flowed so easily from Will Shakespeare's pen don't meet and greet us in the modern world. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, sweet William makes his way to the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Do you remember the first time you saw a piece of art or heard a piece of music that shocked you?  Something you immediately knew your parents would hate?  Remember how good it felt, to like something bad?  In this show, we're talking about shock value — the virtues of transgressive, subversive...Read more

Barbara Ehrenreich

A collection of all of Barbara Ehrenreich's interviews on "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" over the years. Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal has sparked a debate over race this country hasn’t seen in many years.  So, whose America is it?  The young black teen in a hoodie?  The illegal immigrant who’s been living here for twenty years?  Muslims?  Native Americans? You?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are you deadline driven?  Most focused, most productive as “zero hour” approaches?  Well, what about the ultimate end, the true end of the time frame. 

Deadline, indeed. 

How does knowing that you’re going to die affect your life?  In this hour we’re minding mortality.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

American flags are everywhere.  U.S. soldiers are once again heroes.  And some people say it’s downright unpatriotic to criticize the president or the war against terrorism.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the new meaning of patriotism and the crackdown on dissent....Read more

A peek into Steve's office.

In case it’s not obvious: we LOVE books on TTBOOK. But we’re also incredibly picky about which books we choose for interviews.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Boston to Berkeley, people are going raw.  Vegetarians, vegans and Atkins followers are old hat – the hottest trend in food is cool.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why the raw food movement has people turning off their ovens and trumpeting the healing powers of uncooked food...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Most people want to do the right thing.  But what if your survival depended on doing something wrong?  Something deeply repellent.  Something evil.  And what if the police told you to?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the consequences of moral choices, from Nazi Germany to American...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We’ve all heard we live in “the information age,” but what does this mean?  We’ll give you a short history of information – from talking drums onward.  But do we now have too much information?  We’ll hear how information overload is actually re-wiring our brains.  Also, the new theory in physics...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

You’ve seen the Olympics on TV, but do you want to know what’s really happening in Utah?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a special program recorded in front of a live audience at Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City.  From the culture of snowboarding to past Olympic scandals.  Plus...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The scene is a gritty punk club.  Dark and smoky with sticky floors.  A crowd shuffles and talks, waiting for the music.  One man takes the stage.  He sits down and plays – not rock, not techno, but the solo cello suites of J.S. Bach.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, breaking the...Read more

a man in a cave

The Paleo Diet. Running barefoot. Look around, the modern caveman is among us.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Tribute albums, reunion tours and mash-ups.  If pop culture’s all about the new, why is there so much wallowing in our immediate past?  Simon Reynolds joins us to talk about his book, “Retromania.”   Is this retromania a death knell for our own originality?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Soup to Nuts

Part Four

They say variety is the spice of life. But let's be honest, spices are really the spice of life. Pepper, oregano, vanilla. . . parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, things get...Read more

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